By Request

The best wartime program in radio was not heard by U.S. civilians. Called Command Performance (TIME, March 8,1943), it brought together each week the big names in show business. When servicemen overseas requested a sigh from Carole Landis or an ad-lib quarrel between Jack Benny and Fred Allen, they got it. Such high-priced talent, donated as a war service, could not possibly be financed by commercial radio. But last week an economy-size version called Request Performance was well on its way to stardom.

Since it began, four months ago, Request Performance (CBS, Sun., 9-9:30 p.m., E.S.T.) has attracted new listeners by presenting famous people in the act of doing something out of character. At the request of its unseen audience, the show has had Charles Laughton giving Donald Duck elocution lessons, Metropolitan Opera Tenor Lauritz Melchior singing One Meatball, Edward Everett Horton mimicking Frank Sinatra, and spud-nosed W.C. Fields delivering a temperance lecture and drinking water (Fields: "Odd-looking stuff, isn't it? Don't they at least put an olive or a cherry in it?").

Request Performance is a success because the actors themselves have a stake in it. The program was started and is owned by the Masquers Club, whose members are Hollywood stars. Campbell Soup pays them $15,000 a week. Much of the credit goes to Writers Jerome Lawrence, 30, and Robert E. Lee, 27, both from Armed Forces Radio and full of fizz and vinegar. Lee and Lawrence have faithfully heeded some 5,000-a-week listeners' requests, personally answered impossible pleas such as finding apartments or proposing marriage.

Next week: Dame May Whitty playing the washboard in Spike Jones's orchestra. After a suitable buildup, the famed stage-&-screen dowager with the impeccable enunciation will address the mike in a slightly Yiddish accent: "You were expecting maybe Mrs. Nussbaum?"

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